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NBC/Universal Kidnaps News Cycle. Trade Roughage 10/21/08

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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  • Universal Studios is building a ride in its theme parks in Singapore and Los Angeles, based on Michael Bay’s Transformers. The attraction is expected to “use 3-D HD footage with special effects, robotics and track to place humans in the middle of a war between the friendly Autobots and evil Decepticons, who can turn into cars, trucks, planes and other vehicles.” Yay, war!
  • Meanwhile, Universal the studio is planning to sell genre division Rogue Pictures to Relativity Media for $150 million. Rogue has been moderately successful producing low-budget hits like The Strangers, to which a sequel is in development; Relativity will get the development slate as well as the library, although Univeral will agree to distribute all Rogue films through 2013.

MSNBC Films, the documentary unit announced by NBC/Universal’s news channel in June, has firmed up plans for their first two releases. The festival circuit acquisition Dear Zachary will premiere at Tribeca Cinemas on October 29 before rolling out to at least four markets, and in-house production Witness to Jonestown will premiere on the channel November 9. Being that two NBC employees died covering the events at Jonestown, this may be the closest thing to a personal project that a cable network could make.

Hulky Talky. BlogNosh 06/12/08

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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  • “If Iron Man was about America’s power overseas — specifically in Afghanistan, where much of the movie takes place — then the Incredible Hulk is about what happens to our soldiers when they come home,” writes Charlie Jane Anders in a long review at io9. It’s about the impossibility of transforming young men into “super-soldiers” and then expecting them to blend back in.” Related: Anders takes a look at superheroes who can’t have sex, including “Poor Rogue from the X-men. She’s got the cool Susan Sontag hair, and the leather jumpsuit, and the hot boyfriend… but she can never touch anyone.”
  • Anders isn’t exactly ga-ga over New Hulk, but she calls Ang Lee’s version “disastrous.” At Bright Lights After Dark, Erich Man, it’s a sad day on our bitterly defended-from-Galactacus earth when an Ang Lee Hulk film is just dismissed outright, and here it is a super and vastly underrated picture. Granted the CGI was a bit cartoony in the previews (I know I laughed at the time) but looked much better in real big screen life.”
  • David Poland bottom lines it: “The truth is, for all its flaws, there is not a single frame of The Incredible Hulk that contains a fragment of the artistry that Ang Lee brought to Hulk. Of course, the film was too long and the psychodrama too thick for most people. But there was true aesthetic beauty. I hate to even pull this one out of the backpack, but Speed Racer? Genius in comparison. Every frame.”